Hated what g! was becoming, so I started using ddg, liked it at first but had to often modify my queries with a g! but I still used it, the experiance was't great, but it somehow worked, then the controversies around ddg started to come out. At the end of the day you gotta keep the lights on, if your users are not your customers then someone else is going to have to help you pay the bills.
Used kagi since it was recommended here on hn. Used it for a week(-ish) and instantly fell in love with it, the lenses feature, the ability to rank search results meant I could block out websites I hated seeing on my search results and boosting the ones I cared about. Now I am a paying customer.
Oh yeh, one more thing, for the past few months I don't remember a single instance of me modifying my queries with !g. Now I promote them every chance I get, I even got called a paid shill on reddit a few weeks back :D .
It starts with a cause we all can get behind, sometimes its "think of the children", another time it's regulating information from people supporting orcs, and who knows, how do I know things I care about might get suppressed in the future? Stop the nonsese, let me be the judge of what I consume.
The other instance I remember was the whole ms tracking situation[2], if your whole selling point is "Privacy simplified" then do just that without all the nonsese. There were a few others (#duckduckgone) before I stopped using them.
[1]https://twitter.com/yegg/status/1501716484761997318 [2]https://twitter.com/thezedwards/status/1528808759027331072
It blocks copycats and hide them from multiple search engines. You may also use the list with uBlacklist.
Given how impressed I am with Kagi search maybe it is time to check out Orion.
Kagi allows you to remove all that trash and actually find what you need.
-- Aside - why dont we have a keyboard key to switch an entire line from ALL CAPS to all caps or to All Caps... (This would be a great key)
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Is there a way something like Kagi can also search google and ddg and ad results to a search then rank the relevant ones based on which ones users click in the results in addition to whatever/wherever Kagi indexes from? (or is that how it works - because the goog crawler is massive and hard to replicate is it not?)
Serious questions, as I do not know...
They don’t connect any searches/clicks to user accounts. But you can rank sites yourself like this: https://i.imgur.com/Po7mG7Q.png
One of the first things I tried with them. I have the option to down-rank websites I don't like. I can block or lower their ranking.
I'm not sure it's a $10/mo killer feature, though.